I heard rumors from friends the night before, “I'm getting
married on Monday, no wait, I'm getting married tomorrow.” In response to an
end of the week decision by a federal judge to strike down Michigan's
prohibition on same-sex marriages as unconstitutional, the Washtenaw County Clerk Lawrence Kestenbaum decided to
open the clerk's office for Saturday hours from nine to noon so that marriage
certificates could be issued. As I noticed a number of my friends were planning
to jump on the opportunity and tie and their respective knots I knew I wanted
to be there to celebrate as well.
At five to 9:00 my family bundled up and headed down to the
courthouse, we hadn't gotten a formal invitation to any weddings, but with such
short notice who's to stand on formality. For a moment or two I worried that I
was “being there for history” slut, but the happiness I felt for several
particular friends who were now getting married made it clear to me that I was
being there to celebrate my friends. When we got there at 9:05 we were met by
my friend Kevin from the People's Food Co-op handing out complimentary coffees
just outside the building. He said that everyone had just crowded into the
lobby, so we followed on in.
The lobby was chaotic with chatter and occasional cheers
sometimes even very poor efforts at humming a couple of bars of a wedding song.
Amidst the brides and brides and grooms and grooms there were children of all
ages (more about them later). There was the largest group of religious leaders
I've seen in quite a while, and I've never seen so many rainbow colored stoles among
the religious vestments. Then there were a handful of folks like me there just
to celebrate this small step forward in the march for equality, and the
marriages of our friends.
Numbers between one and 50 were handed out to couples; apparently
some other couples had numbers from an occasion in the fall where it looked
like same-sex marriage was going to become state sanctioned. These numbers were
also honored so I think the actual number of weddings today was closer to 80. Slowly
couples would enter the clerk's office do the paperwork and come out with
signed and sealed marriage certificates. This would garner a cheer from those
of us milling in the lobby. In the space downstairs brief marriage ceremonies
were sprouting like early spring flowers.
The many friends of mine who were getting married were like
a tapestry of people who have woven through my life. Adrian and I lived in a
co-op together many many years ago, and then again came into my life when we
were both in a birthing class and our partners were each pregnant each with
their first child. Beth (not my partner Beth) worked at a homeless shelter with
me back in the 90s, and later we ran into her working at a car dealership when
we were shopping for a new car. More recently I did some organizing around the international
year of the co-op with her spouse Lisa. We became friends with Katie and Diana
through mutual friends, and their daughter is a classmate of our son Teo. There
was Jeannie who is one of those activists I should have meant long ago but I just
met and befriended her about a year ago and now I get together with her and a
couple of others once a month in a group I call the wisdom council. Zev’s teacher
Peter was also getting married this morning.
There were lots of other people who I knew who were milling
around included one of my graduate school professors, our families Rabbi Loren,
one of the carpenters who work on my house addition, a friend I’ve known since undergrad
and her spouse (already got married in Vermont they told me). It was no
surprise that there were lots of families who knew Beth (my partner Beth) from
Liberty Pediatrics.
My friend and Rabbi Loren told me that she had been on call
all week to potentially officiate a ceremony in case the judge struck down the
homophobic law and same-sex marriages became legal. It reminded me of doulas
and midwives I know who are on call for births. She said that she had thought
that she wouldn't have to worry about Saturday, after all the County Clerk's
office is usually closed Saturdays, so she made plans which may have been a
little disrupted, but she thought it was worth.
Although Zev and Teo initially came only for the first 10
minutes or so, Zev managed to return with about a half a dozen friends for his
teacher Peter's wedding, and when there was a delay between the paperwork and
the ceremony because Peter and his husband were waiting for their daughter to
show up Zev ran down to the food co-op's to get a couple of bottles of
sparkling cider.
The greatest honor I had for the day was holding one of the
corners of the huppa for Carla and Adrian's wedding. They needed a tall person
and they called me over from the other side of the room. The person holding the
corner next to mine was standing on a chair. I suppose this says something
about how formal everything was. This particular wedding was also particularly
lively as their Rabbi got about half the room to chant amen at the end of
several blessings. Remember this is a room that had three or four marriages
going on at any one time as well as a lot of background chatter and cheering.
The best question I was asked was as part of an interview
for an Internet news program. She wanted to know if I had any thoughts about
the links between this the struggle for marriage equality, and the struggles to
end homelessness. I had lots I could have said, but in short I said any injury to
one is an injury to all this is true in the struggle for freedom and it is true
in the struggle for basic resources. Expanding political equality and economic
equality should certainly go hand-in-hand.
The most fun thing to watch was the daughter of my friends
Katie and Diana, she was bubbling with excitement all morning, and although it
was a long wait in a crowded lobby she held bouquets of flowers and seemed to
continually bounce. She was not the only child of a couple getting married today,
she was just a child I knew the best. I'm sure if I have been watching I would
have seen similar continual enthusiasm in many of the other children milling
around the lobby (in fact the only upset kid I saw was outside of the
courthouse crying that he didn't want to go home).
Now marriage is not always just about the couple involved,
and here is where the politics of marriage become important. Love makes a
family, but love is a hard thing for the state to measure. In family law
marriage is very important. The suit that brought this marriage victory to
Michigan was originally brought primarily as a suit for maternal rights for a lesbian
co-parent. Two of my friends told me that it was marriage today and on Monday
they were filing the adoption papers. Prior to today same-sex parenting couples
in Michigan had to live with the fear that if the parent with legal
guardianship would die or suffer severe disability the other parent could lose not
just their partner but their children as well. I suspect that this was the
subtext for far too many families getting married today.
So we celebrated as we throw off this despotic past. But we
are not through the ordeal yet. There are more rounds in court. I am ironically
optimistic that the mostly conservative Supreme Court will support today's
decision only because the state’s case for discrimination is so pathetic. Today
however I raise a glass to celebrate my friends and their loving families.
Congratulations one and all!
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